


Denethor

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 3rd Age - The Stewards, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2002-07-28
Packaged: 2018-03-23 13:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3770063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My response to the Denethor Poetry Challenge</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Denethor

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

Denethor

#### Denethor

  
Forever one step from greatness  
  
Logic ruling affections  
  
Until my heart is bound in chains  
  
So strong I cannot stretch out of them  
  


Loneliness is mastery, mastery is all  
  
Let the cries of the flesh and the heart  
  
Be silenced forever in the demands of duty  
  
Let pain be subsumed beneath it all  
  


The heart is a prison with walls of stone  
  
Trapped in this prison, as a fly in honey  
  
I watch while my captors tear themselves apart  
  
Attempting to reach me and free me  
  


Fire and darkness war in my vision.  
  
Contending with unseen enemy I fight through the night.  
  
Stability taken from me by dreams  
  
I am left with uncertainty by my side  
  


Now around me the darkness grows deeper  
  
Despair conquers, my heart is flames and frost  
  
Death comes to claim us all  
  
Yet I shall take uncertainty to the grave with me  
  


* * *

This was inspired by the "Denethor Poetry Challenge" on the Henneth Annun mailing list. I wrote it while I was in the middle of a rather nasty depressive patch of my own. As a form of therapy as much as anything else, I decided to try channelling Denethor (I figured that what the hells, he's not likely to be much more depressed than I am, after all). The above is what came out of it. It's not metrically correct and it corresponds to no known poetic form anywhere, but I have a feeling that it's what Denethor would have liked to have been able to write. 

It also had the nice side effect of being able to vent one hell of a lot of my depression. Hmmmm... something to remember, methinks.

Meg Thornton, July, 2002.


	2. Sonnet: Thorongil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My response to the Denethor Poetry Challenge

The Eagle-Star reclines upon a chair  
His posture lithe, yet all his limbs at rest  
His body still, his eyes are everywhere  
A sparkle in them as if at some jest  
The smoke he breathes surrounds him like a cloud  
And there he waits, well hid within its gloom  
He silent sits, he does not speak aloud  
Yet watches all that happens in the room.  
So watchful, like a hawk in silent flight  
A distance twixt him and his fellow men  
Or even as a wolf which stalks the night  
He seems as one far beyond mine own ken.  
As well as one with simple talents can  
I seek the mysteries within the man  



End file.
